Climate Study: Conservatives Aren’t Insane, They’re Just Ignorant

A climate psychology study by UQ Professor Matthew Hornsey suggests evidence that Conservatives are all conspiracy nuts is weak; Matthew instead believes that Conservatives have been manipulated through vested interest “ignorance-building strategies” into doubting the climate consensus.

Academics have suggested that people who tend to accept conspiracy theories also underplay or reject the science showing humans are causing rapid and dangerous climate change.

But a new study that tested this idea across 24 different countries found the link between so-called “conspiratorial ideation” and “climate scepticism” only really holds in the US.

University of Queensland psychology professor Matthew Hornsey and colleagues surveyed 5,300 people to test the link between climate “scepticism” and acceptance of four internationally propagated conspiracy theories around the assassination of President Kennedy, the 11 September terrorist attacks, the death of Princess Diana and the existence of a new world order.

…

Conservatism and climate

The study also tried to tease out the links between the rejection of human-caused climate change and the ideologies that people hold.

It’s here that the study offers the greatest cause for hope, Hornsey says. He has developed a form of “jiujitsu” persuasion technique that he thinks might work.

There’s been a general acceptance that people who have broadly conservative or rightwing ideologies tend to rail against climate science because it rubs their worldview up the wrong way. That is, that tackling climate change will require broad interventions from governments.

But Hornsey’s study finds that “there is nothing inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climate science”.

Instead, it suggests vested interests have managed to reshape the conservative identity with “ignorance-building strategies” in two countries – the US and Australia.

Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations

Matthew J. Hornsey, Emily A. Harris & Kelly S. Fielding

Studies showing that scepticism about anthropogenic climate change is shaped, in part, by conspiratorial and conservative ideologies are based on data primarily collected in the United States. Thus, it may be that the ideological nature of climate change beliefs reflects something distinctive about the United States rather than being an international phenomenon. Here we find that positive correlations between climate scepticism and indices of ideology were stronger and more consistent in the United States than in the other 24 nations tested. This suggests that there is a political culture in the United States that offers particularly strong encouragement for citizens to appraise climate science through the lens of their worldviews. Furthermore, the weak relationships between ideology and climate scepticism in the majority of nations suggest that there is little inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climate science, a finding that has encouraging implications for climate mitigation efforts globally.

Any criticism of extreme climate claims, even a critique as mild as Hornsey’s suggestion that Conservatives might not be completely irrational, has the potential to incur academic ostracism and strident accusations of climate denial.

“Why do people resist apparently reasonable messages?” is a quote from his CV page. The operative word there is “apparently”.

A lot of climate alarmism I suppose is apparently reasonable to your average jo/anna at first glance if you reflect on the crap that we (advanced, western society) humans have done but then asking leading, gotcha quastions like have you stopped bashing your wife/children/dog/employees also appear reasonable because we implicitly trust the questioner as some sort of authority figure. And that perhaps bells the cat.

The climate alarmists have utterly destroyed their initial authority through the agency of Mann et al, Al Gore, Moonebeam Brown, Bill Nye, and closer to the good professor the likes of Lewandowsky etc not to mention the inimitable Graham Redfearn.

The psychology of what has happened is hardly PhD stuff. This paper by the prof seems to me to perhaps be an LPU (a lest publishable unit). An LPU is unit of commodotised academia, sort of like a pound of sugar or a barrel of oil, just nowhere near as usefule but quite valuable in a niche market.

Imagine a think tank develops an economic assessment of the likely consequences for residents of developing countries if they used 10% vs. 50% solar and wind energy.. The press release is posted here, indicating the research says the 50% rate was bad for people in the long run. Imagine I then wrote a post saying the study was by the Cato Institute, and so I assumed the methods were biased, the data skewed, the report junk and the writers biased fools who could never understand the third world and were only interested in making sure the fossil fuel industry thrives. Wouldn’t you think that was typical CAGW ranting on my part?
………………………………..

Now I see, “What gets me is on what basis does the Professor make his judgement?”

This is a very important question/statement! It gets to the heart of the matter.

But the strange thing is, it doesn’t make a difference to the many people here who feel knowledgeable enough to dismiss his research and call him a fool despite not having any idea whether the research is quality or not. Is this not analogous to the scenario I started with? Does this not indicate a disregard for science, evidence, methodology and results, if people are willing to ASSUME that it’s wrong and poorly done? And if this isn’t because people don’t want to face the results, why else would everyone assume it’s wrong?

What does this say for the way people choose what climate science studies to believe?

If people don’t believe “mainstream” science because they think it has an agenda, logic dictates that they shouldn’t believe skeptic science, either, since that has an agenda. Readers are left, it seems, with nothing to believe, and nothing on which to base conclusions concerning climate change. If people don’t accept the science behind climate change, there’s no reason to accept any science. We are left with a society in which half the populace think they know better than scientists, and/or believe them corrupt.

This is a national threat. People who won’t vaccinate are jeopardizing others. Health threats of things like pollution from the burning fossil fuels and surface coal mining are written off as part of the CAGW alarmism. The dismissal of science also can lead to ever-increasing ignorance of it. Why should people learn about science if it’s corrupt in the first place? This leads to a backlash against some types of science being taught in the schools, and the result is perpetuation of false beliefs, such as creationism, and a general dismissal of science. Over the generations, this could result in a disparity in scientific understanding between the left, which accepts the consensus of science, and the right, which more often fights it.

If we could stop thinking in terms of faceless groups, the members of which all have the same attributes, and instead started thinking of each other as people, maybe we’d all stop making so many errors in judgement. We might be able to see the merit in each other’s views instead of writing them off. We might think in shades of gray, rather than black or white. Neither all fossil fuels nor no fossil fuels is any good, since each situation must be addressed according to the needs, desires, resources and direction of development of the community. Does that not make sense?

Let me get this straight. By “alarmists” are you including the mainstream scientific community? If so, you are going to base your trust in science on the behavior of two politicians, a TV personality and “Mann et al.”? If this describes the situation, do you see anything peculiar about this?

Sorry !
I was always told that the FIRST SIGN OF INSANITY WAS THE ABILITY
TO SPOT IT IN OTHERS !
Perhaps IGNORANCE is similar !
As Prof Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro would put it :
“You have to be HIGHLY EDUCATED to be THIS STUPID ! ”
Hornsey fits the description !

Well, true. I have a vested interest in myself, and my children. I want them to live a life that is better than that of a medieval serf.

BTW, only slightly off topic – Schneiderman, the ringleader of the “Exxon knew” scam, has resigned. Not due to his abuse of the law and his office, but due to finally being brought to account for violent sexual acts. One of the “nobility” down, a few hundred to go…

While I’d love to see Schneiderman get his just deserts for his abuses as AG, I’m just glad he’s no longer in a position to continue those abuses. Recall that Capone was brought down on tax charges, not due to his crimes.

It is funny because in the beginning I was a “climate believer”, but as I started to read more and more stuff on the subject the contradictions and holes became ever more apparent and the seeds of doubt were planted for good.

“Ben of Houston May 7, 2018 at 6:10 pm
I think most of us are. I discovered this site back when I was a senior in college. My final project was on carbon sequestration (Chemical engineering course), and when I presented the actual data (most, notably, fact that we have had only 1 degree of warming) there was a murmur through the class…”

Recognizing, of course, that the alleged 1°C warming has occurred over a period of time several times longer than our lives.

A change in temperature every one of us experiences every morning with a similar cooling period every nightfall.

As Latitude inconveniently reminds us, a temperature increase most of are incapable of identifying without the MetO, NOAA, BOM number riggers and their frightfully precise inaccuracies masked by clumsy ham handed adjustments.

I think most of us are. I discovered this site back when I was a senior in college. My final project was on carbon sequestration (Chemical engineering course), and when I presented the actual data (most, notably, fact that we have had only 1 degree of warming) there was a murmur through the class. I was asked afterwards if the number I had said was right. It was pretty eye-opening that almost no one had even looked at the numbers.

The sheer energy cost involved in compressing CO2 to liquid is insane, and the amount of warming that CO2 has caused is blatantly trivial to anyone who looks at it for a moment. People, even the educated, mostly just assume that the “experts” are correct. However, it doesn’t take much of a look to make the “obvious” conclusions seem nonsensical.

You seem to be one of the ‘snowflakes generation I have a great deal of faith in. When more actually take to questioning the CAGW proposition and discover they have been lied to about it, as inevitably happens when an entire generation matures, there will be an enormous backlash.

Same here. Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski and I toured Alaskan glaciers in 2005, where he explained the whole global warming and ice-free arctic concept to me. I remained firmly in the AGW camp for another ten years, when I just couldn’t ignore my doubts any longer. After much reading, I’m firmly convinced AGW is a bust, a minimum is upon us, and eventually widespread glaciation will return — to the northern US states.

So, with 154 credit hours of engineering education, 40 years in various industries, and a being a licensed Professional Engineer, the explanation for my views on climate is – ignorance. Yessssssss, let’s go with that, shall we.

In fact, there’s some evidence that skeptics in general are more knowledgeable about climate science than are the alarmists. It’s not a huge effect but it sure gives lie to the ignorance argument. link

commieBob,
From what I see on this blog, I would tend to agree with your second paragraph. And, in the outside world, I have yet to come across an alarmist who can match my science expertise and knowledge about the debate. Indeed, THE conversation recently came up over dinner at a symposium I was attending and when the person who claimed to have changed from a skeptic to a believer became aware that I knew what I was talking about, he suddenly became quiet and wouldn’t look at me. This also speaks to why alarmists won’t accept challenges for public debates.

My family now groan and apologise for me as I trample yet another friend/relative/guest AGW ‘expert’ into the dust with what I have learned on WUWT.

Nor am i a scientist, engineer or even well educated, but it only takes a little common sense to realise that over my 61 years of life, there have been no climate catastrophes. Nothing but good has been observed of increased atmospheric CO2 with the only empirical manifestation being that the planet is greening.

No matter how the alarmists distort science and politics, nothing they have observed comes close to the net benefit to mankind of that greening.

I would go further and suggest that the most rabid layman AGW believers also believe in the healing power of crystals, still believe fats are bad for you, and practise yoga while taking aroma therapy. Most did not complete grade 10 math and have never read a single scientific paper in their lives. There is absolutely no foundation for arguing a science topic with them.

I have a master’s degree in electrical engineering and have 40 years’ work and study in signal analysis, probability, statistics, and several branches of physics. I just now realized that I have been unable to distinguish human influence from natural climate variability in many gigabytes of climate data only because I am a financial conservative who hates it when governments spend my tax dollars on solutions to non-problems and on creating problems that apparently only more tax extraction will solve. Who knew?

Sorry, but non of that compares to a psychology degree. I mean, nothing you can say, can disprove what the professor says. Mind you, nothing he says can be proven either. It’s not like we can stick our fingers in a plug socket to prove if the powers on with psychology, we just have to take his word you are a bit muddled in your old age.

First, it is telling that you choose to provide “appeal to authority” i.e.your own in providing your credentials than in providing any counter to the fact the earth has warmed only slightly and well within normal and usual patterns. You provide zero data to support your opinion.
Second, what particular expertise does an engineer bring to this debate? You know nothing about climate or the study of same. It would be like a proctologist claiming to be an expert on brain surgery. Sorry, different fields entirely and your expertise in one area does not translate to an expertise in another scientific area.
It is sad that you cannot transfer the scientific method we all hope you use in engineering to a scientific field such as climate, a subject about which we know far less than engineering. Engineering is a piece of cake compared to this and, as we recently saw in Fl.and have seen elsewhere, engineers often get wrong that which they sure as heck should get right.

So, I am an accomplished Electrical Engineer, and I can confirm that renewable energy sources cannot replace fossil fuel energy generation and on a lifecycle basis Solar and Wind Power do not save any CO2, and you would accept my word because I’m an Electrical Engineer and this IS my field of expertise? Sailor, that’s so nice to know, or do you think perhaps that climate scientists might know more about renewable energy than an Electrical Engineer?

The problem is Sailor that most of this debate is about Electricity and Energy which absolutely is the domain of engineers, yet we have these upstart environmental science grads without even one semester of physics trying to tell us how energy generation should work?

I suggest that next time you try to reimagine the world, ask an Engineer to help

The CAGW alarmist community have got nothing right since their predictions of an ice age in the 70’s (yes, I did read the papers then and can confirm it was predicted) so what value do climatologists contribute to society if they can’t get anything at all right?

Meanwhile, your life is made possible by engineers. Without them you wouldn’t have the ability to tap out your nonsense, on a computer, in your remote part of lala land.

And I’m sorry if that seems rude, but you have just insulted every engineer in the world, so consider it less than you deserve.

“sailor2014 May 7, 2018 at 11:10 pm
First, it is telling that you choose to provide “appeal to authority” i.e.your own in providing your credentials than in providing any counter to the fact the earth has warmed only slightly and well within normal and usual patterns. You provide zero data to support your opinion.
Second, what particular expertise does an engineer bring to this debate? You know nothing about climate or the study of same. It would be like a proctologist claiming to be an expert on brain surgery. Sorry, different fields entirely and your expertise in one area does not translate to an expertise in another scientific area.
It is sad that you cannot transfer the scientific method we all hope you use in engineering to a scientific field such as climate, a subject about which we know far less than engineering. Engineering is a piece of cake compared to this and, as we recently saw in Fl.and have seen elsewhere, engineers often get wrong that which they sure as heck should get right.”

Right there is the typical, and all too common, response from alarmists and CAGW religion believers.

“First, it is telling that you choose to provide “appeal to authority” i.e.your own in providing your credentials than in providing any counter to the fact the earth has warmed only slightly and well within normal and usual patterns. You provide zero data to support your opinion.”

“Second, what particular expertise does an engineer bring to this debate? You know nothing about climate or the study of same. It would be like a proctologist claiming to be an expert on brain surgery. Sorry, different fields entirely and your expertise in one area does not translate to an expertise in another scientific area.”

“It is sad that you cannot transfer the scientific method we all hope you use in engineering to a scientific field such as climate, a subject about which we know far less than engineering. Engineering is a piece of cake compared to this and, as we recently saw in Fl.and have seen elsewhere, engineers often get wrong that which they sure as heck should get right”

1) Make more absurd claims based on… zilch!,
2) Make specious claims while demeaning the entire Engineering field,
3) Make an absurd claim that Engineering/engineers do not use the “scientific method”
4) Again, demean the engineering field,
5) Blame all engineers for errors that a few people made; without providing evidence for your specious claim.

A) sailor2014 flagrantly demonstrates absolute ignorance for what is needed to achieve an engineering degree.
B) sailor2014 ignores those engineering, re scientific, skills every engineer must use, every day.
C) sailor2014 demonstrates it’s total lack of knowledge for business, legal and professional rigor demanded of engineers. Who, unlike climate whatever, are held legally, financially, professionally and morally to designs engineers produce.

A proctologist might not be an expert on brain surgery, but they are still a doctor and would be qualified to say something is horribly wrong if a “brain surgeon” demanded a hemispherectomy for a patient who is still in command of all their faculties.

As a layman, you might not know exact masses of celestial objects or returns on investments, but if I told you that the moon weighed 25.2 tons or that an investment would routinely pay 40% annual interest, you would tell me that I’m a charlatan. You don’t need to be an expert in that precise field to see when something is seriously wrong.

As an environmental engineer, it’s my job to put these proposals into practice, and I see how difficult it is and how hard we’ve hit diminishing returns.

Sailor boy,
I guess you are unaware of the great feedback controversy discussed at length at WUWT. It is straight from the EE wheelhouse – unfortunately misunderstood and misapplied by the climate alarmists.

First off, there is no such field as “climate science”, it is a hodge podge of various other fields.
Secondly, you don’t have to study atmospheric physics to read a chart and realize that the earth has been warmer in the past and CO2 levels have been way higher in the past, all without the catastrophic results being predicted.

Finally I find it amazing that you start out rejecting “appeal to authority”, but in reality, that’s all your post is.

sailor2014
“…… what particular expertise does an engineer bring to this debate?”…..

Wow! You really grabbed me by the ‘attentions’ with that one!
A substantial part of my degree ( Engineering Science) involved Thermodynamics, the study of Energy, the sine qua non of Climate. Heat and Electricity are two forms with which you are probably familiar, among others are Potential, Kinetic, Geothermal and Nuclear, and then there’s Dark Energy which they haven’t found yet but we know has nothing to do with night lighting. If, what you call “this debate” is about climate study and those who study it, then it has everything to do with Thermodynamics and hence engineers, who are etymologically related to engines, the machines that convert energy (joules) into useful work (ergs) propelling cars, locomotives, aeroplanes and such. Not to be confused with social engineers whose laws are legion and whose art (its not a science) depends on probability not precision when predicting outcomes. The Earth’s climate is a steam engine, heated by the sun, doing work driving winds and ocean currents and exhausting waste heat from the poles.
Cheers
bahamamike

I hear ya, DJ!
My BS and MS in Metallurgical Engineering + 30 years in Aerospace engineering are merely the hallmarks of ignorance, according to some weenie prof from University of Queensland. M’thinks he needs to be introduced to some old fashioned American ‘iron worker persuasion techniques’, as I learned in my hard knuckle blue collar days before college. There are all kinds of education, in this world!

Indeed. However, these insulting types permeate every level of power in this land. Every level. And they are not little prigs at all. They are very big PIGS scoffing at the taxpayer trough. Some local councilors here in Australia, say Sydney City Council, are paid more than the federal PM of Australia.

sailor2014,
I have a PhD in aerospace engineering with a minor in mathematics and studied computational modelling algorithms as well as control theory toward my doctorate with an undergrad study heavily influenced with fluid dynamics. I understand all of this I read here. I am not a climate scientist because I want to make real money.

All of the work in climate science is based upon mathematical models that suffer from the limitations of numerical integration of nearly unstable to marginally stable systems. You cannot numerically integrate (simulate) an unstable or marginally stable system. The numerical algorithms will add energy to the states within the model and the states within a model will require “natural damping” greater than the algorithm divergence. The mathematical grids, boundary conditions between elements in grids and the integration of time of these model approximations with unknown unknowns make the whole approach an impossible task. The system is too complex for numerical round-off and integration algorithm error growth to not impact the result of the model. Furthermore, any model is limited to the space/domain and boundaries of the model. Outside the range where the data is collected, i.e., the future, the model outputs are technically and mathematically invalid. Finally, all of the modifications to make a mathematical model fit the data do not account for other variabilities not included the models. In other words, the models are tweaked with user specified constants that make their “model of the day” fit the data. Then they tweak the data to make the source data no longer even real.

The whole global warming effort is a way to control you by controlling your access to energy. All hail the powers who saves us from ourselves.
Foton

foton said “Furthermore, any model is limited to the space/domain and boundaries of the model. Outside the range where the data is collected, i.e., the future, the model outputs are technically and mathematically invalid.”

We all know this . The problem is that the climate scientists invented a new field called Climatology. Then then took over the Atmospheric Science faculties at all the universities and turned them into global warming faculties so that they could coerce funding to study a problem that only existed within the software code of a computer. If everyone knew (including all the alarmist side) that mankind can’t affect the climate to any significant degree then everyone would stop worrying about it and the funding for climate science would dry up. As it stands now, the funding for climate research dwarfs all other research funding. Since the field of climatology is researching a problem that doesnt exist, it is like searching for the unicorn. One will never find it but if disaster is supposed to be just around the corner then the funding wont stop and governments wont stop this new tax on breathing. It is all madness perpetrated by one single profession that worships climate models. They are holding all of the world to ransom. Around about the year 2000 reason seems to have disappeared from most of humanity. It is only because skeptics think for themselves that they are not fooled. I was always the kid in class who asked a lot of questions some of them very inconvenient.

Max You didnt answer my question in another post. I asked you if you would ask all your cousins, all those Photons how many does it take to raise the temperature by 1C? Max it seems that you and your cousins are at the center of this whole controversy.

That’s true on both sides of the issue. If you know people’s attitudes to CAGW you can guess their political affiliation most of the time. The left generally supports alarmism because it accords with its worldview. That knowledge alone should inspire skepticism in a disinterested observer.

As many WUWT posters have noted, superior facts and science aren’t adequate to move the left from its alarmist convictions.

“If you know people’s attitudes to CAGW you can allege their political affiliation most of the time. ” Fixed that for you. I know of no other topic where scientific fact is deemed a political decision.

Hot Scot: I thought sailor’s initial comment above was misread, and sailor had initially misread an engineer’s lament that alarmists think we’re ignorant. In any event, sailor complimented my post and didn’t misread it. So I say, sailor is all right! But I’m a sucker for flattery.
Point is folks here have no trouble seeing that Hornsey et al wrote an article on conservative conspiracy ideation (he thinks it’s possible, but maybe it’s manipulated ignorance and there’s no evidence of manipulation but we all know that’s what it is here in the social sciences) that is obviously based on his own conspiracy ideation! And if I confronted Hornsey on it, he would be at a loss, befuddled, at how I got THAT from his article. Probably I’ve been manipulated again, he would conclude. Well, I was pretty worried that it was the “insanity” thing, so “manipulated ignorance” is relatively better for me. I’d rather have that than whatever he’s got (bet he’d have a fancy name for it if he detected it in someone else).

Asking to see the evidence is just so ignorant,at least in academia, University of Queensland style.
Is it something in the water?
Or something in the bureaus of grant gifting?

Cause conservatives are just so easily programmed, marching in emotional lockstep at all these rallies they attend…feeling the emotional glow of being one with the good and righteous of society..What a mouthful this clone of Lew Paper produces;”Ignorance building strategies”

What does this mean?
Anything like policy based evidence manufacturing?
The indulgence by our bureaucracies in that particular little game has produced a stunning amount of ignorance, in public policy.

I graduated in 1964 from the U of Queensland as an engineer. For 50 years I worked all over the world in the mining industry. When I retired (fro the second time) at 70, I was looking to do something for my old school. This ran straight into the BS which had started to bury the place. There is no way I would do anything to stop the place burning to the ground, looking at the people who inhabit the place today.

This is getting to sound a lot like Hillary Clinton’s list of excuses why she wasn’t elected. Yet again another probably well funded study looking at ways to some how convince doubters about AGW. Just like Hillary they are in total denial especially in academia. In academia they tend to believe everyone else are ignorant peons when the truth is many in academia today are incapable of critical thought. Sadly they are indoctrinating an entire generation. Having done polling, in-depth polling, only polling 5300 people in 24 countries is one heck of a tiny sample size. A small sample size might work if selected properly and it is a two choice answer to a question, but in-depth polling requires a far more robust sampling. And as soon as you start translating between languages you really run into problems. Heck just in Florida at least three different styles of Spanish are spoken. I know I held public hearing throughout the state and my translator caught all kinds of grief for his translation of specific and one would have thought common words.

Look at all the trouble Macron just got into by saying the Australian’s Prime Minister’s wife is “delicious”. In French, delicious is synonymous with delightful etc. Yes, many boobytrap exists in translations. You are quite correct. Some of us have even had the misfortune of personally experiencing it in foreign countries. I have a relative who is an interpreter for the deaf. She was very happy she checked out the differences between sign language in Europe and the US. Had she not, she would have made many a ribald comment.

Ah, you thought that questioning the consensus was independent thought. Asking questions, searching for answers yourself, doing the math, looking into claims, watching as their predictions of impending doom failed to materialise. All this you did because “vested interests have managed to reshape the conservative identity”.

One must be impervious to rational thought to not see that one man’s consensus is another man’s “vested interest”. He is accusing conservatives of falling for vested interest, while he himself falls for consensus and appeal to authority. Amazing stuff.

NY AG Schneiderman does seem like he’s a few Fruit Loops short of a bowl. Here he is lying outrageously about a group of pro-lifers that he was persecuting:

The very restrained young attorney with Thomas More Law Center who was interviewed in that clip is Mr. Tyler Brooks, who is in a Primary Election tomorrow for the Republican nomination to challenge the Democrat who currently represents me in the NC House… and who, strangely enough, has a lot in common with Schneiderman:

The irony is, if I recall correctly, the actual raw data Lew used showed exactly the opposite; it was only when he applied his special brand of statistics to small numbers could he tease out his desired conclusion about conservative conspiracy ideation.

I am not a conservative and I do not believe in any of the conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News and those wackos on the AM talk shows. And I also think Trump is an idiot and has no business being in any high office. That said I believe that climate change is exaggerated and that time and technology will deal with any problems that may arise in the future.

“And I also think Trump is an idiot and has no business being in any high office”

and the other choice was Hillary, a corrupt politician who mishandled classified information (an offense that would get most people fired and possibly even sent to jail) was a failure as secretary of state (bengahzi ring any bells?), lead the attacks on the woman who reported on her husbands sexual abuses (so much for women have to be believed) and has no business being in any high office.

bad as anyone might think Trump is, Hillary would have been way worse.

It’s not American conservatives who conflate logical domains. It’s not conservatives who deny individual dignity, including color judgments (“diversity”). It’s not conservatives who deny lives deemed unworthy, including selective-child (“Pro-Choice”). It’s not conservatives who assume, assert, with liberal abandon, to the edge of the last near-observation at the edge of our solar system, and to the absurd beyond in time and space, backward and forward. People want to believe. The consensus wants us to believe in order to exploit a prophecy that will establish monopolies of capital and control.

As usual I have no ideation what he’s talking about but he strings big words together and he’s called a Perfesser so he must be getting paid as an academic to do that because you wouldn’t if you didn’t.

When I read “ideation” my bs meter went off. These so called scientists just create studies (either by intent or ignorance) just to prove their theories. Where’s the data showing how the CAGW believers fare against similar conspiracy theories. Guess what, I know plenty of liberal CAGW fanatics who still believe that Kennedy was assassinated by conservatives, LBJ, Hoover ect.

Many CAGW buy into the conspiracy of “Big Oil Money is behind skepticism of CAGW”, so from what I can see it’s the CAGW believers that are into conspiracy ideation, not the skeptics (most of whom have never gotten a single red cent from “Big Oil”).

“vested interests have managed to reshape the conservative identity with “ignorance-building strategies”
This seams to be a common thread used to explain my alleged derangement and ignorance but I have not ever seen an example given with the accusation. There must be some reason to keep beating this drum but they ought to be able to demonstrate it by finding actual skeptics that have been persuaded and by the exposing the perpetrators of the ignorance building strategies.

It has always seemed to me that liberals such as Al Gore very much want catastrophic global warming to be true because it provides meaning to their lives and justification for very large scale government intervention in favor of green technologies that they are predisposed to support for a variety of independent reasons. On the other hand, conservatives who generally oppose large scale government intervention apply normal scientific scepticism to climate science and are therefore sceptical of the catastrophic claims.

I personally accept the scientific consensus as reflected in the IPCC , but think that the likely climate sensitivity is at the low end of the range proposed by the IPCC. I also firmly convinced that renewable technologies cannot now or in the foreseeable future reasonably replace fossil fuels. Government intervention s that attempt to do so are costly wastes of money that are doomed to failure.

I don’t believe in any conspiracy theories although I think climate science is thoroughly infected with group think. I think I am fairly typical o f politically conservative learners who I know.

“I personally accept the scientific consensus as reflected in the IPCC”
Why ? I always took ‘scientific consensus’ as an oxymoron. Besides, who reads the scientific reports ? Everyone is treated to ‘position papers for governments’ and the ‘facts’ must reflect that position.

Without its corrupt international airport contracts, CNN would have gone BK long ago. There isn’t room for both MSNBC and CNN in cable news viewerspace, with only 20% of Americans being “Progressive”. Especially with CNBC, ESPN, etc in the mix.

The Greenhouse Effect. There is the LW radiation intercepting theory of CO2 and water vapor. Then there is the fact that 99% of the atmosphere are not LW radiation intercepting molecules but still absorb energy from the surface by colliding with it about 6 billion times per second for the molecules close to and at the surface. Absolutely ridiculous numbers.

I don’t think you need LW radiation intercepting molecules at all to have a Greenhouse Effect.

A strictly N2 and O2 atmosphere only is going to reach an equilibrium with the land surface temperature simply by exchanging energy with it. Sun comes up in the morning, heats the land surface, atmosphere of N2 and O2 warms up by colliding with it at ridiculous fast rates and the 2 metre atmosphere is the same temperature as the surface within let’s say 3 seconds. At night, the Sun goes down and the land surface cools off and the atmosphere of N2 and O2 gives back the energy by colliding with it at ridiculous numbers and the land cools off very slowly at night with a tiny surplus of energy being emitted as LW radiation straight through the atmosphere to space but it is constantly replenished by the N2 and O2 collisions.

Temperature up slightly in the day as the Sun comes up, temperature down slightly at night as the Sun goes down.

Now that is physics.

Global warmers think N2 and O2 play no role at all. Because they have brainwashed by bad physics.

Thank you for that. I have often wondered why no atmospheric gases other than CO2, methane and (the unmentionable) water vapour, seem to influence the climate, according to the conventional CAGW rhetoric.

In my opinion, no matter how begnin their influence, they must have some influence with all that energy available.

The other side of the equation is that on the 70% of the earth surface that is oceans the water evaporates, thus heat from the sun that got to the water is then stored as latent heat in the water molecules in the air. . Some of that heat comes from the water itself in the oceans and some of that comes from the atmosphere. If that wasnt the case then the atmosphere would always be too hot for evaporation to stop. Of course this is a local phenomena repeated millions of time all over the surface of the oceans and affected by the many different ocean oscillations around the globe. Winds are the carriers of this water vapour. Now when the water vapour that is carried by winds higher in the atmosphere finally condenses, the latent heat is released. Some of that latent heat escapes to space and the rest gets reflected back down. However the amount of latent heat that was originally taken out of the atmosphere upon evaporation, is counterbalanced by the amount that doesnt get lost to outerspace when condensation happens. However after condensation the air becomes cooler only inside of the local air parcel that condensed.https://www.thoughtco.com/condensation-and-evaporation-3444344

The effect of condensation on the overall atmosphere is that it warms it.

To have equilbrium
However as I said above, the original heat that the H2O stole from the atmosphere upon evaporation is exactly matched by 1/2 of that portion of the latent heat being released upon condensation. The other part of the latent heat escapes to space upon condensation but the part that doesnt escpae to space is exactly equal to the heat that was stolen from the atmosphere in the 1st place because of evaporation. So think of it this way. With evaporation the H20 gets latent heat ( a % from the oceans and a b % from the air above the oceans. Call that latent heat L. therefore L = heat a + heat b
Upon condensation (heat a + heat b ) / 2 gets lost to space but (heat a + heat b ) / 2 also stays in the atmosphere. Call that C. The amount of heat C = (a + b) /2 But that C is exactly equal to the original b that got stolen from the atmosphere upon evaporation. That is necessary in order to have an equilibrium or else you would either have runaway global cooling or runaway global warming. That means b = (a+b) / 2 OR 2b = a+b
OR b =a Therefore the amount of heat from the oceans ( a) that gets turned into latent heat upon evaporation is exactly = to the amount of heat b ( which also turns into latent heat in the water molecule) stolen from the atmosphere during evaporation. So everything in this water cycle from ocean to atmosphere and back,is then in equilibrium. So if there is equilibrium on the oceans atmosphere equation there must also be equilibrium on the land equation as well ; as Bill Illis has explained in the above post. For CO2 to upset that equilbrium you need Mr. Cloud’s cooperation. However as Christopher Monckton has testified before US congress he cited papers which proved that the global warming observed from 1990 to 2000 was almost completely caused by increased global insolation from the sun because of reduced cloud cover . However that would only occur in the land side of the equations. So it seems that CO2 is finding a lesser and lesser role to play in any warming. By my calculations even if you doubled CO2 and all of that extra CO2 absorbed its maximum energy it would only warm the earth surface by 0.4C Hardly anything to worry about.

So it,s only US sceptics who are hardened and befuddled? We feeble idiots outside North America will be easier to manage? I can see why the Guardian publishes that ,as they seem to think British subjects are complete fools judging by their reported opinions. They are behind more than a pay Wall Of course the professor writes this guff it,s his job .Queensland University likes this sort of thing. Though in New Zealand, I read Quadrant On Line. Australian publication.

Re Eric Worrall’s statement: “…I see this shift as progress, an attempt to move psychological thought on climate scepticism from the utterly absurd to the merely badly mistaken.”

I beg to differ (slightly). Asininity is still asininity and horse pucky is still horse pucky. Movement from the ridiculously asinine to the asinine is not really progress. It is the same self indulgent, arrogant, snotty stupidity wearing a different style of hat.

Sadly, I expect no less from “academia” these days, which depresses me no end. I wonder if this Hornsey fellow ever actually listens to himself. (Or maybe that is his problem, he only listens to himself.)

From this 2015 paper:The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change
“On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.”

And from 2012 in Nature mag.The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks
“We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest.”

No, Mr. Hornsey demonstrates an ignorance (willfull or otherwise) of the literature in his own field. That ignored literature refutes his assertion and has demonstrated that climate skeptics tend to be better informed on science and better educated in technical areas.
And that makes Mr. Hornsey a charlatan.

When I originally read that paper, my immediate suspicion was that those doing the study hoped to find a positive correlation between climate skepticism and ignorance of science. When the study in effect showed a slight POSITIVE correlation between skepticism and scientific knowledge, they went off on that ‘polarizatin’ tangent. If degree POLARIZATION was being studied for its OWN sake, there would have been studies on NON climate issues like sports handicapping, etc.

Dont you feel that we are now living in the World of OZ? That 1939 movie was the most prophetic movie of all time. From Wiki

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (/ɒz/) is an American children’s novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow, originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900.[1] It has since been reprinted on numerous occasions, most often under the title The Wizard of Oz, which is the title of the popular 1902 Broadway musical adaptation as well as the iconic 1939 musical film adaptation.

The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz, after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone.[nb 1] The novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it “America’s greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale”. Its groundbreaking success and the success of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.”

From the 2015 paper:The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change
“On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.”
a ailable here:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503

And this from 2012 in Nature mag.The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks
“We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest.”

No, Mr. Hornsey demonstrates an ignorance (willfull or otherwise) of the literature in his own field. That ignored literature refutes his assertion and has demonstrated that climate skeptics tend to be better informed on science and better educated in technical areas.
And that makes Mr. Hornsey a charlatan.

Psychology, like “CO2 causes climate change” is pseudo-science. Those who believe that “CO2 causes climate change) are ignorant of the truth of the matter and their minds are easily controlled by propaganda. There….fixed it.

I am just not smart and educated enough to believe that every person who measured every temperature reading before 1950 was so short that they measured day time high temperatures 1 degree too high and so imprecise that they measured every single night time low at the wrong time and therefore reading it 2 degrees too high, thus requiring every historical record to be cooled significantly in the past.
I am way too ignorant to think that urban temperature effects are a negative impact on temperatures requiring even today’s electronically controlled climate system measurements to be adjusted upwards.
I am just too much a denier and am unable to fathom why when they go to homogenize the data, the urban heat island corrupted data somehow causes pristine wilderness data to become just like it rather than the other way around.
Yup, it is because I am an stupid, uneducated, ignorant denier. And damned proud to be one!

More evidence that the insanity is on the Left, Drudge Report and multiple media outlets are now reporting that NY. AG schniedermna (of Sue Exxon fame) just resigned after reports surfaced of his sexual misconduct.
The Left continues to eat its own, in its own PC culture.trap. HooYaaa!

This is yet another illustration of the fact that conspiracy ideation is much more prevalent on the Left, where it afflicts even “mainstream” liberals like Hillary Clinton and her supporters, than it is on the Right, where it is common only among very-far-from-mainstream figures like Alex Jones and the JBS.

It is equally delusional in both cases:
● There was NO “vast, right-wing conspiracy” smearing Bill Clinton
● There’s NO secret Illuminati conspiracy pulling the puppet-strings of governments
● Climate realists are NOT paid shills of “big oil”
● Fluoridation and vaccines are NOT government plots to poison you or make you docile
● Free market think-tanks like Heartland Institute are NOT plotting with evil industries to deceive the public
● 9-11 was NOT an “inside job”
● There is NO conspiracy of “vested interests” reshaping the conservative identity with insidious “ignorance-building strategies”

On the Right, the conspiracy nuts are marginalized.

But on the Left the conspiracy nuts get professorships at the University of Queensland, and even nominated for President of the United States.

And awarded all myriad of prizes, the Nobel Peace being just one of them. For example:

Paul R. Ehrlich
Awards and honors
The John Muir Award of the Sierra Club
The Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International
A MacArthur Prize Fellowship
The Crafoord Prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and considered the highest award given in the field of ecology
ECI Prize winner in terrestrial ecology, 1993
A World Ecology Award from the International Center for Tropical Ecology, University of Missouri, 1993
The Volvo Environmental Prize, 1993
The United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize, 1994
The 1st Annual Heinz Award in the Environment (with Anne Ehrlich), 1995[42]
The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, 1998
The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, 1998
The Blue Planet Prize, 1999
The Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America, 2001
The Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2001
Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the Generalitat of Catalonia, 2009.
Fellow of the Royal Society of London 2012 [1]
2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology

Dave I think you have a few things wrong.
*There was a right wing conspiracy but rather than attack the Clinton’s were trying to expose them. The Clinton Chronicles.
*The Illuminati is not a secret it is real and very powerful.
*Correct, climate realists (sceptics/cool dudes) are not paid shills of ‘big oil’. They know CO2 is beneficial
*Fluoride is a toxic poison. Governments want it in the water. They will not listen. They are either stupid or it is a put up job. Both. There is a conspiracy. Prof. Paul Connett says No to fluoride
*Heartland Institute run with the science
*9/11 was an inside job as was the Oklahoma bombing
*The Right deal in facts. There a very few nuts to marginalize. The Left on the other hand are psychotic see Kerry Bolton
In addition
Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot Kennedy. A marksman was involved
Sirhan Sirhan did not shoot Bobby. Possibly the security guard. Bobby shot behind the ear.
James Earl Ray did not shoot King see William F Pepper, Orders To Kill
Timothy McVeigh’s truckload of chicken shit did not take out the Murrah Federal Building see Stephen Jones

BrianJ, the dose makes the poison. All things are poisonous in high enough concentrations.
There is not and never was any evidence that either 9/11 or OKC were inside jobs.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a marksman.

BrianJ: The right worked together to expose (and attack) both Clintons, but that’s not a conspiracy- the way you state it feeds into Hillary’s meme. Won’t bother with the rest, you’re entitled to believe the items in your list, but please don’t present as a conservative, you embarrass us.

The important point is that in all of the 1001 conspiracy theories on the internet not one of them has any support above ~ 20% and never will unless one of them turns out to be true. However the global warming hoax is supported by 66% according to latest polls. So if you view it as a conspiracy of the climate scientists which I do then it means, that of all of the conspiracy theories; this one is in the lead. However to look at it the other way, 80 % of the public are right to not believe in the 1001 conspiracy theories but 67% of them are wrong to not believe in the climate scientist conspiracy. Global warming has revived conspiracy mathematics!!!!!!!!! i am still sure we will get a whistleblower on this yet. The fallout from this will be never to trust any government agency ever again. I shudder to think what the fallout for science will be.

Vaccines are not. Mandatory vaccination probably is: it isn’t about selling more vaccines, but about breaking the minds of parents, breaking families, making children denounce their parents, sue their parents, etc. Classical n@zism by Président Macron.

You clearly don’t know much about medical history. Infectious diseases were a serious problem, and a combination of sanitation and vaccination mostly dealt with most diseases.
What is left with infectious diseases are the remainder, like malaria or the common cold, that do not have vaccines, or vector borne diseases like Lyme disease, again with no vaccine. AIDS is one of the few viral diseases treatable after contracting it, but another disease with no vaccine.
Andrew Wakefield was a classic quack, just more successful than most.

I’m afraid you’re the one who doesn’t know much about real history (not fake history written by vaccine fanatics). There is no evidence for the case of almost all vaccines. Most diseases decreased before vaccine introduction, where vaccines were not largely available, and many disease decreased mostly by change of definition at the time (notably “polio”).

There is an explosion of what would have been called polio in India, following mass vaccination.

Diseases that reduced in incidence before vaccines were available were mostly those prevented by sanitation, as with cholera or typhus. There are a good many ways a disease can be spread, and vaccines are mostly needed for arbovirus or droplet spread diseases. But that is oversimplifying the issue.

After ten years of visiting this site and appreciating the time, hard work, and dedication of AW and the many knowledgeable contributors here, I have no doubt which side of this argument has withstood the test of time and moral high ground. I don’t need some two bit pseudo professor whose livelihood depends on Climate Psychology (WTF that is) to insult my intelligence. I would argue that attending his class is the true “ignorance building strategy” in play here.

Eric Worrall is a Left Wing jerk. Suggested reading, The Psychotic Left by Kerry Bolton.
The Little Ice Age ended around 1880. Of course the planet warmed, about 1degree and we welcomed that warmth and yet there are jerks who demonise the extra warmth. The earth is still 2degrees cooler than the Roman Warming. The burning of fossil – sorry – abiotic fuels with the additional CO2 created a bonanza for the earth and those who dwell on it. Sadly we are about to tip into another mini Ice Age to last about 200 years and starting now! refer Habibullo Abdussamatov. The warmist alarmists have done an unbelievable amount of damage to this planet and are responsible for squandering billions upon billions of dollars. Long story short. Wind turbines do not generate 50/60Hz electricity. They do however produce ample harmonics which through smart meters are fraudulently added to consumers power bills. PV solar panels may heat ones own water but does not have the capacity/grunt/oomph to push to the boundary along the street and into a neighbours property to heat theirs. No one should be paid to supply solar into the grid.

. ‘Furthermore, the weak relationships between ideology and climate scepticism in the majority of nations suggest that there is little inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climate science, a finding that has encouraging implications for climate mitigation efforts globally.’
It would be interesting to see what people in the ‘big emitters’ countries think.
Think China India Japan Pakistan Russia.
Their governments are producing plenty of CO2.
They just see grant money and a licence to burn as the important issues.
The rest is sophistry.
‘By their deeds you shall know them’.

PS not having looked at the numbers, the US is big on theories about the assasination of JFK.
But asking people in other countries, most of whom were not even born then, would make any associations
tenuous anyway.
Its not as if they have been arguing about this for half a century.

Just like the climate models, the conclusion of this paper is derived primarily from the initial assumption that the skeptics are wrong, the science is settled and both are as obvious as the Earth is round. Those are huge assumptions to make with so much evidence to the contrary.

What will all of these psychologists do when it turns out the skeptics were right all along?

Notice the sly way that the New World Order is thrown in as an example of an unbelievable conspiracy theory.
The reality is that the New World Order is alive and well, as numerous official reports show.
My take would be that this paper has a secondary aim of trying to take focus away from the NWO because it does most of its insidious expansion in the dark.
BTW, I attended University of Queensland, which used to have an enviable reputation for excellence. These days there are just too many events, like some related to Great Barrier Reef research, plus some related to data secrecy, plus some about treatment of climate change disbelief, that give cause for pause. It is apparent that non-scientific emphasis has increased in the last 30 years as soft faculties have grown. The questions are whether the UQ can reverse its course and when. Geoff

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
David Rockefeller

“But this present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts to erect an enduring structure of global interdependence.”
David Rockefeller, speaking at the Business Council for the United Nations, September 14, 1994.

I’m sure it was by sheer coincidence that a seminal conference greatly influencing the CAGW movement (the “right major crisis”?) was held at David’s estate just outside of Rome (The Club of Rome).

Hello everyone !
The ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY in the USA is ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS
regarding TRANSPARENCY IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
CHECK IT OUT for yourselves and MAKE A SUBMISSION PLEASE !
It is an initiative of the newly (Trump) Appointed Mr Scott Pruitt !!
EVEN A LETTER OF CONGRATULATIONS for ACCEPTING the principle
THAT ALL DECISIONS ON EPA LAWS PERTAINING TO SCIENTIFIC CONTENT
MUST PASS PUBLIC SCRUTINY would be a help !!
Submissions CLOSE on May 30th. 2018.
Regards , Trevor.

yes, conservatives are ignorant. And they KNOW it. Liberals are just as ignorant, but they think they know.
The only sure thing for a conservative are
* trust only god
* politicians lie. Hell, that’s literally their job
* business lie, too, but at least in a capitalist country, if unhappy of a business, you can quit.
* young are idealistic and gullible, they follow the easy path with anyone promising to right the wrongs of the world. When they understand they were lied, they turn conservative. When not, they stay liberals.

That appears to be one of the principle divides between conservatives and liberals.

The morals, and therefore the actions, are governed by weather we are Darwin’s evolutionary products, or weather we are God’s children. Doesn’t matter which God either; it’s the morals behind the idea that governs our actions and responsibilities. The Left don’t have such hang-ups, and don’t believe in consequences.

Jim Heath: No need for ‘splainin’, we can simply state it thusly: “Are conservatives who deny the science of man-caused climate change on other planets conspiracy nuts, or just ignorant?” When the conclusion is “Yes”, your grant is approved! See how easy, and that way you don’t give them any ammo for their “ideations”, so thoughtful.

UQ Professor Matthew Hornsey is just plain wrong.
Conservatives are independent in nature, and not easily stirred to making rash decisions.
That is to say most conservative people are in the main people have the courage and drive to formulate their own ideas independently of any consensus. They mostly do not need, or seek the approval of others (that is what the ‘left’ is all about).
They may seek the advice from others but that does not necessarily mean they have to agree with them. They may form friendships and bonds with many others but that does not mean they have to agree with all or any of them — having colleges and friends that get thing done is what it’s all about.
For most conservatives a half pound of observed verification trumps a ton of theory.

If you are good at herding cats then you may be good at trying to herd bunch of independent thinking conservatives.

I am sure he knows it. I am confident he has tenure. Also, pretty sure he has a “compliant” state Govn’t and a pliable federal Govn’t to help him in to retirement on the back of the “climate change” scare.

The whole point of scepticism IS ignorance – a belief that we know very little and that what is claimed as fact must be proven.

One of the main reasons I am sceptical about AGW is that our understanding of climate appears to be very rudimentary. I am ignorant and see little that suggests climate scientists are not ignorant too,

The fundamental crisis of conservatism means that it can react so slowly to the most pressing problem in the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the world made an important step forward with the Paris Convention.

Rather, the politicians who signed the Paris Accord, trying to get as much guilt/gilt money from the West and America as possible for themselves and their sponsors, are only stepping forward off of the cliff into deliberate hardship for billions, and slow agonizing death for hundreds of millions to energy restrictions.

We are still waiting for you to come up with evidence that climate change is a problem, and that man is responsible for it.
If conservatism means we want you to prove your claims, then the world needs more conservatives.

Mihaly says “the fundamental crisis of conservatism….” The rest got a bit gibberishy, but moving slowly on problem you conjure up is not a crisis, nor a bug- it’s a feature! What does scientist J. Hansen think of the “important step”? Don’t bother telling us how it’s an important step forward, tell Hansen.

Psychology is a pseudo-science. They do not use equal signs in their “equations” so their theories can never be subject to definitive experimentation, they are not falsifiable. This is the reason they resort to statistics as a means to support their theories and surreptitiously inject their theories into the lexicon with fancy labels for a given behavior they believe is bad or good or otherwise requires them for their esteemed opinion. That enables them to place themselves above us, refereeing the boundaries of their own Venn diagrams they use to box us into herds and brand us.

Climate science has become a pseudo science now resorting to statistics and unfalsifiable claims so it seems quite natural that a majority of psychologists would feel a sense of kinship with climate scientists and have an instinctive desire to defend it because they realize that if people are able to sink the sophistry of the pseudo science of climate modeling – they might next come after the pseudo-science of psychology demanding proof which psychologists cannot provide any more than can climate scientists.

I contend that psychologists such as this Matthew Hornsey are the ones who are in fact ignorant of what science is. They are willfully ignorant to the very idea of truth being immalleable because it is an entirely foreign and frightening concept to them that something they believe could ever be disproven. So we can conclude that, like their climate science brethren, psychologists are afraid of real scientists who require proof thus rendering “studies” such that from Matthew Hornsey of no more value than a whimper in the dark of night.

This may be in part true. There are “rules” for falsifying statistical projections and predictions that are similar to “real science”. Some psychologists lean in said direction.

This has far more to do with marketing than anything else. Climate science failed, so the new problem is how to sell the failed science (because they are not going to change the theory, obviously). That’s where the psychologists come in—Cook, Lew, etc. “How to Market a Failed Theory”. They leave out science because that failed and include a lot of surveys, appeals to authority, etc in an effort to market the failing theory as true, necessary and not to be ignored.

Need, I point out that Hornsey is from the same University that Cook hails from?
Or that Hornsey cites Lewandowsky?

Throughout Hornsey’s abstract, he coaches statements with waffle terms. Apparently to give his claims an appearance of scientific foundation; but effectively to minimize reality.

Indeed, Hornsey built his alleged study around his “confirmation bias” assumptions that mirror false claims of Lewandowsky and Cook.

“Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations, Matthew J. Hornsey
Thus, it may be that the ideological nature of climate change beliefs reflects something distinctive about the United States rather than being an international phenomenon”

N.B. Hornsey’s assumption that “idealogical nature” is solely CO₂ and CAGW skepticism and does not refer to the very religious CAGW global warming or climate change belief structures.

“Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations, Matthew J. Hornsey
Here we find that positive correlations between climate scepticism and indices of ideology were stronger and more consistent in the United States than in the other 24 nations tested. This suggests that there is a political culture in the United States that offers particularly strong encouragement for citizens to appraise climate science through the lens of their worldviews.”

N.B. Hornsey’s global assumptions based upon what?
Hornsey’s first research papers in his “references” cite Lewandowsky’s synthesized results based on blogs, bloggers and comments. Research shown to be decisively erroneous with author assumptions contrary to data collected.

Hornsey also loves to cite his own research as supporting his current research. A house of cards built upon bias, assumptions and baseless conclusions.

“Relationships among conspiratorial beliefs, conservatism and climate scepticism across nations, Matthew J. HornseyFurthermore, the weak relationships between ideology and climate scepticism in the majority of nations suggest that there is little inherent to conspiratorial ideation or conservative ideologies that predisposes people to reject climate science, a finding that has encouraging implications for climate mitigation efforts globally.”

Mihaly: Thank you for proving that your complete unfamiliarity with stuff like risk analysis won’t act as any sort of brake on your urge to speak on it. Let’s us know in advance of the incredible lightness of being… one of your posts.

This is a PSYCHOLOGY study — therefor unlikely to be reproducible by any other researchers (see the studies by John PA Ioannidis). Neither the study report itself or the SI give any of the questions asked to determine any of the data — failure to disclose the actual questionnaire is inexcusable.
But the major tell is this (quoted from the paper itself):

“For example, we used a single-item measure of climate
scepticism, which focused entirely on beliefs about the causes of climate change.”

To determine who is a climate skeptic, they asked a single question.
To make matters worse, the “conspiracy theories” they questioned people about — remember, they are asking these questions in 24 countries — were:

“We measured people’s endorsement of individualist and hierarchical
ideologies, as well as their belief in four internationally recognized
conspiracy theories (surrounding the assassination of John F.
Kennedy; the death of Princess Diana; the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and
the existence of a New World Order).”

It is no wonder that the US scored so high on the conspiracy theory holders.
In other words, like so many psychology studies, it really made sense to the authors — but is silly beyond belief to any rational being.

CORRECTION: It is possible to find the Methods, including (sort of) the questions used in this study. “Methods, including statements of data availability and any associated
accession codes and references, are available at
Methods, including statements of data availability and any associated
accession codes and references, are available athttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0157-2”
The climate change question used was:
“‘Thinking about the causes of climate change, which of the following best describes your opinion?’” “We analysed the data by treating climate change scepticism as a continuous
measure. People who said that climate change was ‘entirely caused by human
activity’ were coded as 1, ‘mainly caused by human activity’ as 2, ‘mainly caused
by natural processes’ as 3, and ‘entirely caused by natural processes’ as 4. As only
a very small number of respondents clicked the option saying there was ‘no
such thing as climate change’, and because we were mindful of not skewing the
distribution, these participants were also coded as 4.”

The skewing comes from assigning the first answer “entirely caused by human
activity’ were coded as 1” — in other words, that answer is considered the “right” answer and in most support of the scientific consensus….as readers here know, THAT IS NOT THE CONSENSUS!

The true consensus position is answer #2 “mainly caused by human activity” (more than 50% of warming since the mid-20th century….etc). Thus even believers in the IPCC Consensus are ranked as a little bit skeptical.

— That maybe so, but it was nothing to do with why I find ‘The Consensus’ so obnoxious. I think their analysis is weak and too speculative (The Science), their solutions work badly (renewables), it costs way too much (in both capital and recurring costs of less efficient and more unreliable energy systems), I suspect their motives (they are too close to degrowthers in content and spirit).

Why should AGW skepticism automatically be linked with conservatism? Maybe because liberals walk in lock step on every possible issue so if you aren’t in sync with one of their dogmas you are automatically conservative?

Did I read that right? They are proposing that belief in conspiracy theories spawns ignorance? And their “proof” is a conspiracy theory? “Matthew instead believes that Conservatives have been manipulated through vested interest “ignorance-building strategies” – one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard.

Yes. I admit to being ignorant. So please enlighten me by answering a few questions:

1) If global warmists are speaking the truth, why must they alter data, both past and present?
2) Since when is computer model output considered “data”? It doesn’t pass the test as ‘data’ in any other discipline besides modern climate science.
3) If climate science is actually science, why is skepticism vilified, when skepticism is, in every other field of science, critical for forwarding the cause of knowledge?
4) If climate science is actually science, why do its adherents act like fundamentalists for particularly intolerant religions?

My degrees are in Political Science and Computers. I spent about 15 minutes in 2003 researching on the internet on the subject and concluded the sun and water vapor we not going to be overridden by a puny amount of C02. Even a child could imagine looking down on the earth from space and see a few specs of vapor coming out of some smoke stacks and be doubtful they were driving the temperature of the earth. Even a brainwashed liberal should be able to listen to the claims and rhetoric coming from CAGW and realize something is seriously amiss.

I have continued to study the issue and at this point I am literally shocked this crap show has gone on this long and simply will not die. And that I have blood relatives that still believe it angers me constantly.

All this does reassure me though that this species has absolutely no chance of ever really making its way out of it’s own ass so there is reason to just not have hope and be happy for now.

Jacob, I’m sceptical of CO2 warming bringing catastrophe to the earth. However, it is an error to view CO2 as being inconsequential in its effect because of its small percentage of the atmosphere. This “puny” substance is responsible for for creating and sustaining the remarkable biosphere that greens and populates the planet, fills the oceans with life and gives you and I such joy. It is an illogical thread held by many sceptics that I’m surprised doesn’t get tugged more often.

I made the mistake of following the link to that Guardian article. One commenter called DizGuzted said:

The stupid minority is taking the majority down with them.
This isn’t politically correct, but the situation is becoming so dire that I think the only solution is to remove the sceptics from the gene pool,
something like the French did with their appalling aristocracy. It is becoming a matter of survival.
There is enough CO2 in the atmosphere already to lock in our own extinction, and I see zero serious efforts to truly curb emissions
or remove CO2 from the atmosphere. You don’t need to be a scientists to work it out from here. You don’t even need an IQ in triple figures.

When challenged he went on:
The climate-denialism of these folks is removing my descendants (and yours…) from the gene-pool. I am simply responding in kind, if you think about it.
Do you have another workable solution? I’d love to hear one, seriously, but all I seem to hear is the same denialist “opinions”, loudly brayed from every orifice.
The time for intentions is now gone, the time for action has arrived. What do YOU propose?

And
At 410 ppm we have locked in at least 6 degrees (and maybe in excess of 10 degrees with the flow-on effects).
6 degrees is extinction. MASS-extinction.

How could anyone reason with someone who is so badly worked up?
Most of the comments were more polite, but the emphasis always on action-now-or-we-are-toast.

The alarmists have really done a good job. And it shows in how people they have convinced just cannot
cope with the idea that someone might, and is actually allowed to, disagree on something important.

When you include a New World Order movement in your group of conspiracy theories to scoff at, you are bound to arrive at totally invalid conclusions. What if a new world order would only be rejected by conservative ideology. Practioners of the corrupted social ‘sciences’ are all for a NWO that excludes the world view of free enterprise conservatives. Good Lord. The corrupted don’t have to be stupid too.

There is no “climate consensus”. Scientists have never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture. But even if they had, the results would be without significance because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation. Scientific theories are not substantiated through a voting process.

After evaluating the paleoclimate record and the work done with models. one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. It is all a matter of science.

A climate psychology study by UQ Professor Matthew Hornsey suggests evidence that Conservatives are all conspiracy nuts is weak; Matthew instead believes that Conservatives have been manipulated through vested interest “ignorance-building strategies” into doubting the climate consensus.

In other words, Conservatives aren’t drunk on the Kool-Aid he loves so much?

Heads up to Professor Matthew Hornsey, there are many who don’t fit into the pigeon hole of “US Conservative” who also abhor the CAGW the Kool-Aid.

PS What the hel-l is a “A climate psychology study”?!?!
Sounds like something an advertising company might do to sell a product they wouldn’t buy themselves.

Usually “conspiracies” involve people getting together, and conspiring. They make a plan (or rather someone makes a plan and others accept it, otherwise they might end up with a criminal plan that’s the criminal variant of a horse designed by a committee), and everyone does its part of the unified criminal plan. They have to agree before the crime.

What if people don’t get together, there is no plan, and they don’t know each other? People just play along, pretending they see something that doesn’t exist, for huge benefit. For example, medical doctors might pretend they see evidence that vaccines are useful and safe, when there is none. It’s hugely beneficial for the whole health “care” industry.

OR … a smaller group with a common goal does “studies” in their quest to how best to manipulate the gullible?
In some political/ideological realms, I believe they have been refereed to as “useful idiots”.
The number of letters one can put behind ones name does not not exclude one from being a “useful idiot”.
(Actually, the more the letters, the more the usefulness.)

Show me a climate scientist with a post grad qualification is signal analysis who accepts their idea of the climate normal behaviour. More so if you add the demand he or she has access to the latest in military grade signal analysis software. The climate scientists idea of normal is so inadequate it is an insult to the intelligence of any of my generation who passed the eleven plus.
What right does this pathetic ignorant bigot have to judge those who do or do not accept the work of a self centred and introverted group who refuse independent assessment of the work by their superiors in other fields?
As I often point out we engineers refuse to accept the data quality simply because in a normal engineering quality assurance program for bottom end commercial work it fails with the lowest category possible of reject this supplier for this and any future quotation unless the supplier shows evidence of retraining and revision of its practices. A category never actually experienced in any of its assessments as none have failed to understand that mixing primary, secondary and tertiary data and treating all as equal is not an acceptable practice. ( Here primary is defined as tested against a calibrated standard: secondary as measured using uncalibrated equipment: and tertiary as inferred from other data.)

Sorry but I frankly despise climate studies more every day as I find out more of its disgraceful behaviour in data adjustment as they like to call it but swindling is what it is called when engineering companies like VW do it on an infinitely more trivial level.

There was a time when people humorously remarked that “Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it”. It was humorous because the thought of a puny species of beings capable of changing nature was ludicrous. The Earth’s atmosphere weighs 5,500,000,000,000,000 tons; good luck trying to change it.

How about this – I am not a “conservative”, just a rational, educated person who has slowly come to a reasoned position that the global warming hysteria movement is at least 75% – well, hysteria. Any warming happening is clearly mild, any sea level rise happening is minor, not catastrophic, and the end results may be partly beneficial as well as problematic.
But if I mention any of my well thought out, reasoned hypotheses on this to my liberal friends they react like the girl in the exorcist. People have stopped talking to me when I have been honest about it, called me a “brainwashed Fox News victim” and many other unkind things simply for questioning.
The kicker for me is how the “cure” for a supposed apocalypse on the horizon due to AGW is to… send billions to Third World nations. If they really believed this was an imminent crisis that could kill us all, they would actually be funneling that money into research to find a way to solve the problem.